ASHLAND — The Ashland City School District’s participation in the Ohio Schools COVID-19 Evaluation (OSCE) — and an attempt to keep more students in the classroom — has garnered mixed reviews from the school board, staff and parents.
The district is among ten school districts across Ohio participating in the study, which launched at Ashland City High School in mid-November with intentions to guide state policy revisions on how students are quarantined in the spring semester.
The goal of the evaluation is to determine if a student who is identified as a close contact to another student with a positive COVID-19 case needs to stay home and miss school, if both students were wearing masks correctly.
The district’s administration is allowing those who were in direct contact with a positive COVID-19 case to opt into the study, and possibly skip the Center for Disease Control’s advised 14-day quarantining period following their first negative test.
“We were far enough into the school year when this came up. We knew community spread, student to student, had not happened,” Superintendent Doug Marrah said. “So therefore, that set us up to be in a position to consider this study.”
A close contact is defined as anyone who spends at least 15 minutes within six feet of another who tests positive for COVID-19, whether or not they are wearing a mask. The district has seen 38 cumulative cases between students and staff, and 489 were quarantined since the start of the school year, according to the district’s COVID-19 dashboard.
“There was some frustration by parents when students were getting quarantined, and for us and our team, we’re looking at this information showing that the spread isn’t happening at the schools,” Marrah said.
Despite the inconvenience of quarantining, parents like Jaime Parsons and Maura Grady aren’t pleased with the option for students to skip it. Both had students quarantined earlier in the school year.
“By all means, have the students be tested, that’s great. We find out where they are and where the spread is, but sending them back into the classroom when they are possibly still contagious is irresponsible and should not happen,” Grady said.
The mother of two saw her daughter quarantined earlier this year. It prompted her family to wear masks at their own house for two weeks due to health concerns.
Parsons’ daughter was also quarantined already. She missed two weeks of school and volleyball at a “critical” part of the school year.
“I would say as the wife of a teacher, I’ve seen them struggle to manage both the online and in-person learners, and oftentimes, those students who are at home, virtual, are the ones who suffer because they aren’t right in front of the teacher every day,” Parsons said.
She and Grady expressed concern that though someone might test negative, they could later test positive and have spread the virus in the interim.
With one round of students already through the testing process and another to complete the cycle tomorrow morning, the district is yet to report a positive test through the evaluation.
Students are tested with the “BinaxNOW COVID-19 Ag Card,” made by Abbott Laboratories. The test offers a 95 percent confidence interval when compared to the traditional cumulative RT PCR tests, or real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction tests.
The test is completed using a swab in the nose. Results are delivered in approximately 20 minutes.
Students and their parents also answer a 15-minute survey about their activities.
If a child is a close contact and opts into the evaluation, they will be tested two times a week for two weeks for a total of four times. The student must quarantine until the next available testing day, but can return to class after one negative test.
Additionally, students who are not close contacts can also participate in the evaluation as a control group. These students are tested once a week for two weeks.
If a student would test positive, they would need to stay home from school and be isolated from other children and family members as possible for a period of 10 days.
“As a parent of a student who has not been enrolled in the study, every time someone consents to this study, my child’s risk of contracting COVID-19 increases, or at least, you can’t tell me that it doesn’t,” said parent and AU professor Diane Bonfiglo. “The current science does not allow you to suggest that does not happen, and I did not consent to that.”
The evaluation has not been approved by an Institutional Review Board, she continued. Such a process typically is required for research projects to ensure the protection of human subjects.
“My first thought was, how did this get past an IRB?” Bonfiglio said. “This study, this evaluation — if we’re calling it not research — has not been evaluated by the Ohio state’s IRB.”
She expressed intentions to pull her high school student from the school’s in-person program if the evaluation continued without revision.
President of the Ashland City Teachers Association, Melissa Baker reported hearing concerns from teachers, too.
“I don’t know that we truly know that we don’t have student-to-student spread,” Baker said. “I know we’ve had students who have gotten really sick. We’ve had staff who have gotten really sick. And I know that this study is putting close contacts back into the population of the school where we don’t know what could happen.
“If our district wants to be part of a study to test, I don’t have a problem with that, our teachers don’t have a problem with that… We’re just concerned that the way we are participating in this study is putting more kids at risk than is necessary.”
Members of the Ashland City Schools Board of Education were divided, sharing varied feedback on the district’s approach. Vice president Brandon Wells shared negative responses from parents and staff, while president Zach Truax mentioned positive feedback via email correspondence.
Wells expressed concern about the approach and motioned for continued conversation on the topic. Though the board decided it wouldn’t make a formal motion, they did ask the administration to make them aware of any changes and decided the evaluation should be discussed at every board meeting moving forward.
“If we have documentation of student-to-student transmission in a building, I think that is a key piece of data that may change mind,” said board member and former president, James Wolfe.
The next group of students to be tested through the OSCE at Ashland City Schools will begin after Thanksgiving break. The evaluation is expected to continue through mid-January.
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